A great customer experience leads to repeat sales, positive publicity, more customers, and most importantly customer loyalty. It allows brands to cut through the clutter of competition and truly stand out. In a digital era, where customers are well informed and empowered, one bad service experience is all it takes for a negative review to go up on the internet, where it remains for eternity. On the other hand, providing a great digital experience has real rewards: A McKinsey study found that with respect to customer care, a company that provides a superior digital experience can increase customer satisfaction by 33%, while creating savings of 25-30%, due to reduced call center volumes.
Customer support is no longer limited to telephone lines where customers are kept on hold for long periods, to finally speak to a customer care executive, who at the end of it all, is not of much help. Today customers raise complaints on multiple channels – phone, website, e-mail, chat, social media, apps etc., and they expect to be engaged on the platform of their choice, Omnichannel support is the need of the hour.
Additionally, customers expect a personal touch. Generic responses to their queries and complaints won’t suffice. They also demand a seamless experience. They find it frustrating and a waste of time to have to repeat their story and information on multiple platforms of the same company for the same issue.
Tech support is the first point of contact for customers. Thus, it is vital that the executives build strong relationships to provide exceptional customer experience, which in turn leads to enhanced brand loyalty. Additionally, as tech support teams are also tasked with growing the business, they need all the help they can get. This comes in the form of the 3 A’s that increase their efficiency, and improve the quality of customer service. Investing in technology that helps organizations achieve their business goals via tech support is a must in a digital world. All things being the same, superlative tech support can be the reason customers choose a particular brand over competition.
The evolving customer service landscape on account of changing customer behavior, the IoT (Internet of Things), and tech support as a revenue function, requires robust and dynamic technologies to manage it. The right tools can revolutionize the way companies serve customers; and AI, Analytics, and Automation form the pillars of a strong customer experience strategy.
Gartner reports that by 2018, 45% of the fastest growing firms will have more smart machines than employees, real-time analytics will influence 50% of agent interactions, and by 2020, the use of virtual customer assistants will jump by 1,000%. Further, a Gartner analyst Katherine Lord advises, “Invest in machine learning, big data and other smart-machine technologies to make current and future IT service desk operations proactive.” These numbers prove that the 3 As are here to stay.
While automation replaces low level support staff, it creates the need for more skilled employees who are focused on growing the business. Intel implemented such a change with a view to increase efficiency and create value. Chris Sellers, Director, IT service operations, Intel, spoke of it in the report ‘The Technical Support Centre of the Future’, saying, “We’re shifting higher skill sets down to the lowest level possible, and looking to automate more lower-skill-type work. We’re also pushing Level 1-type work into self-help and predictive incident management where we have self-healing, and we’re predicting and addressing problems before they even happen.” Cost savings on one hand, and value creation on the other.
This move to AI, analytics, and automation should be embraced by companies as it provides tangible reduction in operating expenses (automating tasks is faster and cheaper), while also aiding tech support in providing exceptional customer experience (analytics combined with automation can help diagnose and predict problems, and offer suitable solutions swiftly).
CSS Corp is helping organizations leverage the inherent power of data, delivering insights that aid in decision making, future-proofing and also in delivering unique Customer eXperience (CX). Our extensive industry experience and expertise in analytics helps us deliver cutting edge services and solutions with the perfect mix of processes, technology and people.
CSS Corp’s Active Insights Suite delivers advanced Automation, Analytics and AI capabilities to study customer behavior, predict trends, and provide proactive offers to the user, as well as autonomic resolution. It meets the requirements of an omnichannel, preemptive, personalized, and seamless support system.